Preview of Symmetry in Nature

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Fractal Dryad

One of the most frustrating things about curating right through the Arts Festival is that I get a lot of inspiration but there’s no time to act on it until quite a bit later. This year was no exception. Many people have commented that a lot of my pictures resemble fractals – and I agree with them because they do – but I’ve never set out to make a fractal picture before. I’ve chosen the pattern that’s found in trees, flowers, seeds and a whole host of other natural phenomena – a Fibonacci spiral of ever smaller images in a theoretically endless sequence. The key thing is that each image in the spiral is the exact replica of the same image at regularly diminishing or increasing scales.

Fractal Dryad

Producing an aesthetically pleasing picture that more or less follows these ideas has been difficult. The problem is chosing an image that shows the spiralling nature in a dynamic way. The sequence I’ve made starts at the large image to the bottom of the picture and then rotates up to the top left, across to the top right and on down in a clockwise direction until it spirals out of sight. The base picture is from my Dryad series: where a mirrored image of a skeletal tree is projected on to Natalie’s back as she stands in front of a screen.

Here’s a screenshot from Wikipedia showing the mathematics that the spiral sequence is based on.

Fibonacci Spiral

I added further copies of the whole picture into the cut-outs of her head so that she appears to be looking out of her own shadowed outline.

Fractal Dryad 1

Fractal Dryad 2

Now I’ve finished working this out of my system it will be time for some more photography. I’m off to Sweden in a couple of weeks time where I’m sure to find some more inspiration from nature.